by Cass Morris
“I have nothing to hide,” Latona said airily as she popped the plain blue seal. “And it’s not as though you’re above meddling with the post, yourself.” While Aula squawked in protest, Latona read.
It wasn’t much of a letter, only a note, in Alhena’s carefully elegant hand:
‘Dearest sister,
‘Your husband is receiving a letter, too, from Father, asking if you’ll join us in Stabiae, even though it’s still not quite the season for it. He’s asking for you both, but it’s you I want. Please come, even if Herennius won’t. Find a way. You’re needed. And I know this will sound strange, but I think you should invite Vibia Sempronia along with you. I can’t explain in a letter. Just come.
‘Ever your faithful,
‘Alhena’
Frowning, Latona held it out to Aula. “Do you know anything about this?”
After a quick perusal, Aula shook her head. “I haven’t the faintest. Vibia? Why on earth would she want you to—” And then Latona watched as something clicked behind Aula’s eyes. “She counted on Vibia once before, with Scaeva. You don’t think this could be . . .” Her voice trailed off, as though she were unwilling to put words to the thought.
Latona was scarcely more eager. “Something to do with him?” The idea shot a cold bolt straight through her. “But—in Stabiae? How? Why?”
“Maybe not him, specifically,” Aula said, “but . . . related? Other . . .” Her eyes flicked left and right, then she dropped her voice to a low whisper. “Other Discordians?”
“I don’t think any are hiding behind the trellis, Aula.”
“Well, pardon me for caution, but I didn’t think your household was privy to such dealings,” Aula shot back. Latona’s head wagged in concession to that point. “So . . . what will you do?”
“Tell Herennius I’m going to Stabiae, and he can come or not as he likes. If he tries to make a fuss, I’ll tell him Alhena begged my assessment of some young man she’s mooning over there.” Latona shrugged. “He’ll want no part of such feminine fuss, but he’s not likely to deny me.”
“And what about Vibia?”
“I suppose I’ll go speak to her.” Latona took the letter back. There were no braziers burning on this warm spring day, and it was too early for the lamps to be lit, so she passed the paper to Merula. “Toss that in the kitchen’s fire when you get a chance, please.” She looked back to Aula. “I can’t imagine Alhena would mention her if she didn’t truly think it necessary. I’ve no notion whether I’ll be able to convince her to make a trip to Stabiae on short notice, but . . . if Alhena thinks I must, then I’ll at least try.”
“Well, it’s not a conversation I envy you,” Aula snorted. “She’s been more prickly than usual ever since Sempronius left the city.”
* * *
The following afternoon, with Merula at her side, Latona went to the Mellan domus on the lower slope of the Palatine.
Whether by his influence or his wife’s, Taius Mella’s home was kept up in elegant fashion, modern but not trendy, the walls painted in geometric patterns of bright colors. The mosaic on the atrium floor paid tribute to the family’s tradition of excellence, depicting famous landmarks and creatures from the various regions the family had conducted trade expeditions in, prior to their elevation to the senatorial class: tigers, leopards, and elephants all danced about the impluvium in a tile-blocked parade. Now, Taius Mella had to conduct his business through an intermediary, but unlike many senators, he felt no shame in his family’s mercantile roots. Latona found herself wondering at the differences between him and her own husband. Both men had more wealth than ambition, both had married pedigreed patrician wives, but Taius Mella had always struck Latona as a pleasant-spirited man, content with his lot and proud of his clever wife.
“What a pleasant surprise,” Vibia said, as the steward showed Latona into the back garden, where the plants stood in neat rows, each leaf and blossom clipped and angled to perfection.
‘That control, so prim and precise . . .’ Latona doubted that Vibia did her own gardening, but this was her domain nonetheless. A place to feel secure, where limitation could be channeled.
Vibia was in some ways so different from her brother, and in other ways so similar. They did not have as much in common physically as siblings could. Vibia was slightly built, with narrow, angular features, while Sempronius was broad and solid. Her skin was pale as Abydosian alabaster, while Sempronius’s was naturally darker, and further weathered by his time in the military. They shared thick sable hair, however, and they both had keen eyes; that was where they looked the most alike. It was not just in the coloring, bistre and enveloping, but in the sharpness, in the way they had of looking at you in a way that suggested they could see through to the soul.
‘Of course, in Vibia’s case, that might literally be true.’ Fracture mages had that talent, to peel away layers of pretense and scoop out the truth beneath, however flawed or ugly it might be. For a Spirit mage, accustomed as Latona was to creating the version of herself that the world saw, it was somewhat discomfiting. ‘Perhaps that’s why we’ve never been quite at ease with each other.’
But Latona wanted to be—and not only for Sempronius’s sake, nor because Vibia had saved her life. They were mages, women of the same class, and closely connected politically. They ought to be friends. That, too, was a Spirit-born impulse, to seek amiability where one could.
But if she was right about Alhena’s summons, she needed an ally far more than a friend.
* * *
A shiver of anxiety sloughed off of Latona, and Vibia found the twitch of it distracting. Something had rattled the lovely Spirit mage, and her glamour was inadequate to the task of covering it. At least, she could not hide it from a Fracture mage. Pure empathic talent was not within Vibia’s domain, but she could often feel the fragile edges of another’s soul, and Latona’s were fluttering. “Is this purely a social call?” Vibia asked, as soon as the niceties of greeting and small talk had been done away with.
Fortunately, Latona did not look offended by Vibia’s preference to get straight to the matter. “I’m afraid not,” she said, then flicked her eyes around the garden at the slaves standing nearby, ready to offer cherries or water or a fan, if needed.
Vibia caught her meaning and looked to the pair waiting near the door. “Dana, pour us each a cup of water. Aganthus, leave a plate of cherries. You are all excused.”
After they had gone, swishing away in their matched linen tunics, Latona said, “Thank you. It’s not that I would mistrust your staff, but—”
Vibia held up a hand. “No need to apologize. If it is a sensitive matter—”
“It is.” Latona’s hand hovered over her cup for a moment before she continued. “At least, I think it is. I had a very strange letter from my sister Alhena—”
As Latona explained the letter and its summons, meant for the both of them, Vibia’s mind churned. The youngest Vitellian had made more of a positive impression on Vibia than the rest of her family combined. Oh, Aulus was a solid enough man, she supposed, and a good ally to Sempronius in the Senate, but Aula was a meddlesome chatterbox, Gaius’s involvement in the Iberian matter was too knotty to be an accident of fortune, and Latona—
Vibia wished she thought better of Latona, but she could never entirely quell the suspicions lurking in her heart. Trouble clung to the woman’s skirts. Even if she had no ill intentions of her own—and Vibia had to credit that Latona seemed almost painfully earnest in her altruistic endeavors—she ended up right in the thick of mayhem too often for Vibia’s comfort. Vibia might have been able to overlook that if she could have kept Latona on the outskirts of her social circle, but Sempronius had formed an attachment. How desperate of one, Vibia hadn’t fully winkled out of him, but she read the situation as dire enough to warrant concern. ‘The woman attracted the attention of a Discordian cultist, for Fortuna’s sake.’
And that, it seemed, was the problem that had brought her to Vibia’s doorstep.
“I don’t know the full story yet, obviously,” Latona was explaining, “but the fact that Alhena didn’t want to commit it to paper worries me. You may be one of the only people in Aven who can appreciate the significance of that.” Latona bit her lower lip briefly. “I’m worried she’s stumbled into some Discordian . . . something out in the country. I can’t think of any other reason she would beg for me to join her and bring you along.”
Despite the warmth of the day, the garden suddenly seemed considerably cooler. Vibia’s hand pressed against her stomach, as though that might soothe the ache that Latona’s words had provoked. “If you’re right, the implications would be—”
“Terrifying,” Latona finished. “If Pinarius Scaeva wasn’t just a single maniac, some deranged remnant of the cult, if there are more of them out there—”
“It’s not impossible,” Vibia admitted. “Ocella killed as many as he could and banished the rest. I’d heard they went to the East, Bithynia and Parthia, places where their perfidies might go unnoticed. But if they stayed, or returned after his death, and found each other again . . .” She shuddered.
“It might not be so!” Latona rushed to say, though Vibia wasn’t sure who she was most trying to convince. “Maybe I’m wrong and it’s something else entirely. And I know it’s mad to ask you to take a spontaneous sojourn to Crater Bay before the summer even properly begins, but . . .” Latona’s face took on slightly pained lines. “I couldn’t just ignore my sister’s words. And, well, she was right before.”
A stab of guilt joined the faint twist of horror in Vibia’s gut. Alhena had summoned her alongside Sempronius, when Latona had been prone and helpless in that riverside warehouse, but Vibia’s contribution had been slight enough. Her powers in Fracture, openly known to the world, were tepid things next to what her brother could wreak with Shadow, in secret. Latona, unless Sempronius had been far more indiscreet than Vibia guessed, did not know about his talents. Unconscious during his efforts, she woke to think Vibia her savior. She did not mean to call attention to Vibia’s insufficiencies. She thought she was doing just the opposite. It stung, nonetheless.
Still, she knew Alhena had a considerable gift for foresight, and Latona was correct—she had been right before. Vibia’s presence had been necessary, if in a small way. ‘I wonder how much Alhena knows about who was more valuable in that warehouse.’ They had left the girl outside, for her own protection, but also so that she would not see Sempronius’s magic at work. A girl blessed by Proserpina could see with far more than her eyes, however. The thought that she might learn the secret Sempronius had kept for so long, the hidden blasphemy that could undo his entire life—‘These Vitellians are dangerous, even if they don’t mean to be.’
But Discordian cultists were more so. Vibia remembered the nausea that had swelled in her when she had seen Scaeva working his profane magic. If more of that was going on, Vibia owed it not just to Aven but to her element—to the reputation of Fracture mages everywhere—to do what she could to eliminate the foul practice.
“So,” Latona asked, with a pathetic glint of hope in her voice, “will you come? Your husband would be welcome, too, of course, and any of your people—”
Vibia’s breath caught briefly. “I can’t. I’m sorry.” Vibia hoped her voice conveyed sincerity. “At least, not right away. I have commitments through next market day.” It was the truth, and a hasty rearrangement of her plans might draw nosy questions, which Vibia would rather avoid. She pressed her lips together, then added, “I could join you afterwards, perhaps.”
Latona, who had wilted slightly upon her denial, straightened a bit. “Or, if I get down there and discover there’s nothing to this, I could write back to spare you the trip.”
“We may hope,” Vibia said, then hastily amended, “Meaning no offense, of course.” She might not be eager to enjoy the Vitelliae’s hospitality, but neither had she intended to slight it. “I only meant, better for everyone if there’s nothing unsettled there, so we may hope for that. But I agree with your assessment. Vitellia Alhena seems little inclined towards histrionics. I don’t think she’d summon you for nothing, let alone beg my attendance.”
VII
Gades, Southern Iberia
Lucretius Rabirus disliked travel.
He had never seen the point in it. Oh, going to his various country estates dotted around Truscum was one thing. None were more than a few days from the great city of Aven, and he had many comfortable options for staying the night along the way, whether with friends or at posting houses of excellent reputation. Once arrived, he could enjoy the same comforts as he did in his domus in Aven: furniture he had chosen himself, his own clothes, his own books, food prepared by his own cooks, the attendance of his own docile slaves. His wife and son, if he desired their company; solitude, if he did not, for they could easily be left in Aven or packed off to a different estate.
Familiarity, in his consideration, was a vastly underrated concept.
You never knew what you might run into, out in the provinces. That was the trouble. Rabirus had served time as a military tribune, as nearly all men of political ambition did, but his father had arranged a suitable position for him. Rather than spending his early twenties baking in the Numidian heat or growing mold in the Albine forests, Rabirus had enjoyed a comfortable posting in Thessala. It had blooded him, he was quick to point out if anyone raised an eyebrow. He had seen combat. There had been a riot in the city of Polidaea. The legion—the two cohorts the governor had sent to deal with the crisis, at least—had had to act quickly, to put the unrest down. Rabirus knew what it was, to wade through blood in the streets, but gratefully, he had then been able to return to a well-built house in a city of decent, civilized people, rather than a tent in the wilderness.
As his ship approached Gades, he felt a lip curling in distaste. Things would not be so simple here, practically at the end of the world. They had passed through the Pillars of Hercules that morning, and Rabirus had felt an awful shiver course through him when he realized he could see Iberia to one side of him and Mauretania on the other. That marked the moment they were no longer on the Middle Sea, which, as far as Rabirus was concerned, encompassed all of the world worth knowing about. Gades faced out to the Endless Ocean and its lurking horrors.
Despite a hundred years of Aventan governance, Gades was still Tyrian at its heart. Rabirus knew what he was likely to find among its people: Eastern decadence, for all that they were on the edge of the western wilderness. Men wearing jewelry. Snake-worshipping cultists. Courtesans sitting at table with prominent citizens, as though they had any right to mingle with their betters. ‘The gods know how many uncouth beards I’ll be forced to endure the sight of.’ And commerce, invading every conversation. Such a mercantile people, the Tyrians, and the Athaecans and Aventans who had settled in Gades and the nearby Iberian cities had picked up the disease. Like any proper Aventan senator, Rabirus despised merchant-talk. It was beneath him, and yet he knew he would be forced to dine with men who would speak of nothing else, as though profit and gain crowded all other ideas from their minds.
He had come to regret the position he had put himself in. Keeping Sempronius Tarren’s arrogance in check required his presence in Iberia, but it was an unpleasant duty. ‘For Aven,’ he reminded himself. ‘To protect the city from his predations, you must keep him from covering himself in glory and riches as Dictator Ocella did. Deny him the advantage of grand military victories, and you deny him power in the city itself. Then, perhaps, we can withdraw swiftly from this wretched misadventure and go back to tending our proper domains.’ The far-flung provinces were a drain on Aven’s resources, in Rabirus’s opinion, and ought to be left to their own devices. ‘Would that we had never expanded out of Truscum.’
Gades looked pleasant enough from a distance. It was built on a peninsula only
barely connected to the mainland, Rabirus recalled, and it seemed to take up the entire spit of land. As the ship pulled toward the harbor, Rabirus took in the low skyline. The buildings were of a sandy white stone for the most part, and most did not rise even as high as some Aventan insulae. Only a few stretched toward heaven, and those looked to be built in the Athaecan style, with pointed pediments.
As they drew nearer, the crash of waves grew louder. White spray shot up from gray-brown rocks, not all of which were the natural coastline. Gades had built itself out, at least near the harbor, with artificial walls dropped into the sea. When he disembarked, Rabirus was surprised to see a knot of togate men waiting at the far end of the dock. Even at a distance, Rabirus could see the thick purple stripe on the tunic and toga of one of them: the mark of the praetor, the same stripes Rabirus himself wore. Governor Fimbrianus, it seemed, had come to greet him.
Governor Fimbrianus—ex-governor, that was, since Rabirus had been formally invested with the title at the New Year and would now assume the position in truth—was a weedy man, handsome in his youth but now well past his prime, limbs shrunken to spindles through inactivity. He still wore a toga well, keeping his back straight and his arms in the proper posture, not allowing the weight of the wool to bend his back. Rabirus’s lip curled, though, to see the golden chain around his throat. If he indulged in such ornamental excess to greet a fellow Aventan in a public place, what depravities might he have sunk to in private?
As it happened, Rabirus was soon to find out. Fimbrianus had, with evident goodwill, arranged a celebration, which he was eager to rush Rabirus to. “Oh, I know you’ll want to bathe and change into fresh clothing, no need to worry, we’ve some time yet,” the older man chattered as he led Rabirus through the streets toward the governor’s domus. “Though I’m afraid it’s nothing like the baths in Aven. No aqueduct, you know!”